CHI89LA131 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From D92 · Monroe, MI to Fulton County Airport (RCR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI89LA131
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N64087
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From D92 · Monroe, MITo Fulton County Airport (RCR), Logansport, IN
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT REPORTED THAT HE ENCOUNTERED MARGINAL WX WITH THUNDERSTORMS (TSTMS) & DIVERTED TO PERU, INDIANA; HOWEVER, THUNDERSTORMS WERE THERE AS WELL. HE CONTACTED GRISSOM APCH CONTROL. AFTER SOME DIFFICULTY WITH RADIO RECEPTION, HE OBTAINED VECTORS TO DIVERT TO LOGANSPORT, INDIANA, BUT BY THAT TIME, HE WAS SURROUNDED BY TSTMS. AT AN ALT OF 2500', HE ENCTRD HVY RAIN WITH NO FWD VIS. HE RPRTD THAT HE FLEW INTO A TSTM & ENCTRD SEVERE TURBC. HE STATED THAT 'THE GYROS TUMBLED,' & HE THOUGHT THE ACFT WAS SPINNING, THEN THE ACFT EXITED THE STORM INVERTED, AT AN ALT OF ABOUT 400'. HE RECOVERED FROM THE UNUSUAL ATTITUDE & ELECTED TO LAND. DRG THE LANDING, THE LEFT WING TIP CONTACTED THE GROUND & THE ACFT WAS DAMAGED AS IT SKIDDED TO A STOP. POLICE & MEDICAL PSNL NOTED THE ODOR OF ALCOHOL COMING FROM THE PLT'S BREATH. A SAMPLE OF BLOOD WAS DRAWN FROM THE PLT APRX 3-3/4 HRS AFTER THE ACDNT. A TOXICOLOGY CHECK OF THE SAMPLE SHOWED THE PLT HAD A BLOOD/ALCOHOL LVL OF 0.16%. HE WAS DENIED A MED CERT AFTER HEART SURGERY IN 1975.
Probable cause
POOR JUDGEMENT OF THE PILOT DUE TO PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENT FROM CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL, HIS INADVERTENT FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER, AND HIS INADEQUATE CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT DURING A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS WERE: THE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE PILOT BECOMING SPATIALLY DISORIENTED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI89LA131
- Event ID
- 20001213X28770
- Case number
- CHI89LA131
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d7f42595a70d62e8bb0713fceaaee17ab80873c05ab2e15e0326c0ab6240cfa; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:08:11.250Z.